HYPNOSIS, SEX, AND 'MINE CONTROL'
Mine Control: The Erotic Casebook of London’s Foremost Female Hypnotherapist – Lilith M Clayton
If you type ‘hypnokink’ into Amazon, as we *occasionally* do here at Cosmic Pancakes! – for purely research purposes, of course – then you’d find a new book of sexy hypnosis tales at the top of the page. (Although I do wonder how much Mr Bezos curates these results based on your, ahem, past purchases?) While I was expecting to find how-to guides, I can’t say I was totally surprised to find “The Erotic Casebook of London's Foremost Female Hypnotherapist”.
Now, I’ll say up front, Lilith clearly isn’t is a ‘real’ hypnotherapist and anything that you imagine you can stop imagining whenever you like because ‘hypnosis’. But I’m also not completely convinced that these are 100% bonafide descriptions of real events that actually happened. “A book about sexy hypnosis is fiction?”, I hear you ask? Well, yes, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) it seems that this might actually be a work of imagination rather than reports from the frontline of cutting-edge sex hypnotherapy.
To be fair to Lilith, the rest of the non-how-to books that the same search term turned up all appear to be works of fiction too. (Unless you think something called Teacher's Pet: A Hypnotic Seduction Tale is an autobiography, or Kiki vs Dracula is a sports report.) But fiction or not, it is certainly a wild ride, and one that reads so much better than other slutty alternatives. For a start, it is an actual novel – and, in this case, also an actual physical book – rather than only a Kindle work that so many seem to be. At 314 pages it’s a sizeable chunk of text, and so much longer than some of the other books and stories we’ve come across (pun intentional).
So having read a few sexy hypnosis books, I guess the questions you have are: is it sexy? Is there much hypnosis? And how much sexy hypnosis is there? The answers, dear reader, are yes, yes, and a metric fuck tonne. Honestly, it’s almost wall-to-wall sex hypnosis; or rather it is when it’s in sexy hypnosis mode, and not just hypnosis mode. Let me explain with some contrasting chapters.
The first chapter, “Show Me Your Penis”, certainly screams sex. I would be lying if I said that, after reading sexy hypnosis books from the (slightly more prudish) 1960s, that a title like that doesn’t jump out and raise an eyebrow or two – you can’t claim that Lilith isn’t direct and to the point! This chapter is a case study of a man who presented to quit smoking but, for some reason, while he’s hypnotised, Lilith decides to tell him to get his junk out, and also to play with it (and more that I won’t go into in this description!).
Of course, it was all a very skilful and intuitive means to understand what smoking actually represented for him and by getting ‘it’ out (and waving it about) Lilith got him to work through some seemingly unrelated issues, which ultimately end up being exactly the key to him quitting smoking! Not only that, but towards the end of the chapter, our hypno-sex-therapist receives a phone call from said newly-ex-smoker where, in ‘hypnosis’, he describes the detailed ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of his related sexual escapades with his wife.
So hypnosis, tick. Sex, tick. But is it sexy? Oh, yes, I would say so. Let’s just say that the sex isn’t entirely vanilla but… no, I’m not going to finish that thought. If you want to know how not vanilla it is, but also how not sleazy, how positive and also how inclusive it is, then you’ll just have to get a copy and see for yourself. (Incidentally, while researching for this post, I noticed that the whole of the first chapter is available for free on Kindle as a sample or preview, so as long as you don’t share your Kindle with your family – or you don’t care – you could read about the hypnotised man getting his junk out for free!)
I don’t want to give away spoilers, but later in the book, some of the chapters go down some incredibly detailed and darkened corridors where the sex pay-off takes some time to arrive. One chapter is practically a novella and the sex only kicks in towards the end; but given where those sex scenes go, I can only say that the extensive lead up was worth it…
It feels odd discussing a sexy hypnosis book without all the usual sarcastic, comedic asides. I guess the difference with this is that it’s a real fun read. It doesn’t get bogged down in hypnosis theory and practice, the lead character herself is fully three-dimensional with thoughts about significant things and criticisms of the world, and the sex itself is varied, surprising and, I have to say, really well written. I suspect you’ll be shocked, as I was, at some of the places it goes (and some of the places ‘things’ go), but at the same time, you’re not buying a book of porn if all you want is romance. You have been warned, is all. (Look out for those aliens though – they don’t seem to ask for consent.)
In some weird way, I hope Lilith really is a hypnotherapist, and I really hope some of this was born out of actual events. I would find it hard to believe, but we can but dream. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got some (ahem) internet research to be doing.
